Apple Platform Security (Jan 2026) [pdf]
(help.apple.com)150 points by pieterr 14 hours ago
150 points by pieterr 14 hours ago
>They made C memory safe?
They made a dialect of C with bounds safety, see:
Sort of. From my understanding they’ve been heavily using clang with fbounds checks to insert checks into functions. I think there was work done to try to insert them into existing code as well. They memory tagging in new processors help avoid overflow exploitation. Maybe someone can jump in and add more details
Many years ago. It’s called Firebloom. I think it’s similar in theory and lineage to Fil-C.
Apple's commitment to privacy and security is really cool to see. It's also an amazing strategic play that they are uniquely in the position to take advantage of. Google and Meta can't commit to privacy because they need to show you ads, whereas Apple feels more like a hardware company to me.
I still like to encourage people to watch all of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U&t=1993s for the details (from Apple’s head of Security Engineering and Architecture) about how iCloud is protected by HSMs, rate limits, etc. but especially the timelinked section. :)
I still recommend Mr. Fart's Favorite Colors as a refutation, describing why all of these precautions cannot protect you in a real-world security model: https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177...
Unbreakable phones are coming. We’ll have to decide who controls the cockpit: The captain? Or the cabin?Krstić: “Here’s how we reduce the chance that even Apple can access or alter X, and here’s how we can make that credible.”
Ross: “Even if you make X cryptographically airtight, the real fight becomes political/physical coercion: ‘ship this or else.’”
Those can both be true at the same time.
modeless linked to this article earlier today:
https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption/
My current understanding of the facts:
1. Google defaults to encrypted backups of messages, as well as e2e encryption of messages.
2. Apple defaults only to e2ee of messages, leaving a massive backdoor.
3. Closing that backdoor is possible for the consumer, by enabling ADP (advanced data protection) on your device. However, this makes no difference, since 99.9% of the people you communicate will not close the backdoor. Thus, the only way to live is to assume that all the messages you send via iMessage will always be accessible to Apple, no matter what you do.
It's not like overall I think Google is better for privacy than Apple, but this choice by Apple is really at odds with their supposed emphasis on privacy.
Apple's other emphasis is customer experience, and there are more "I forgot my code, help me recover my stuff" people than you can imagine.
It would be bad PR for Apple if everybody constantly kept losing their messages because they had no way to get back into their account.
Nobody expects their text messages to be backed up.
They get deleted and people shrug.
Security is pointless if platform allows 90% users to be social engineered into running code disabling that security
I still like their hardware. But let’s not pretend that there is any part of Trump’s body that he won’t kiss and sell out his customers for. If Trump asked Cook to put a backdoor in iPhones or impose tariffs on Apple, Cook would do it in a minute
Cook couldn't personally put that backdoor in himself though. There would (presumably) be Apple employees who would blow the whistle if they received such a command.
In today’s market? You see how many tech workers have shut up about protesting every little thing inside large companies with all of the layoffs happening?
I have been cocky for 30 heads with the thought that I could always find a job quickly - and have even in 2023 (3 offers within 2 weeks) after being Amazoned and in 2024 (just replied to one recruiter the day after a layoff). But even I shut up and keep my head down these days. As long as we ain’t killing kids, I am not saying anything.
Apple's ad revenue was 1% of its total in 2024. It was estimated to be 2-3% in 2025.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2024-q4/FY24_Q4_Consol...
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/10/30/apple-4q-2025-earnings/
Their net profit was a little over $100 billion last fiscal year. They get $20 Billion+ in pure profit from Google being their default search engine.
That’s 20% of their profit
The point is that Apple will make money any way that it can, including ads. That's why iOS privacy is worse than its competitors. You can't install an app without telling Apple because if you could, Apple wouldn't be able to monetize you as well. You can't get your location without also telling Apple because if you could, Apple wouldn't be able to build its location services as easily. No such problems on Android.
As long as you don’t count the $25 billion that Apple gets from Google.
What does whether they’d go bankrupt or not have to do with whether they’re an ad company?
They sell third party ads: companies unaffiliated with Apple pay Apple to advertise on Apple platforms.
They’re an ad company. Just because it’s currently a small slice of their total revenue doesn’t make it untrue.
Well that’s what Americans voted for. So I don’t think anyone cares that every CEO (definitely not just Tim Cook) is schmoozing with Trump.
> Well that’s what Americans voted for.
Americans are not one person.
> So I don’t think anyone cares
Clearly they do.
> every CEO (definitely not just Tim Cook) is schmoozing with Trump.
Tim Cook was (supposedly) principled. I guess it's hard to pretend that you care about privacy or human rights while eating dinner next to bin Salman.
> Tim Cook was (supposedly) principled. I guess it's hard to pretend that you care about privacy or human rights while eating dinner next to bin Salman.
I guess if you thought he had principles then yeah that could be disappointing. Personally I've never tried to moralize corporations though, I just assume the only principle that every company and CEO operates by is whatever increases the stock price.
Funny that you think that people have free will under this zombie social media mind controlled Internet world we’re living in.
Besides Trump‘s approval ratings are worse than ever so I don’t think people really got what they wanted, they got who they voted for not what they voted for.
You know what's even cooler? Apple's commitment to hiding US federally-mandated backdoors for dragnet surveillance: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government “prohibited” the company “from sharing any information,” but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting and will “detail these kinds of requests” in a separate section on push notifications in its next report.I claim bs at this whole apple privacy thing, nothing but propaganda.
Two years ago I was locked out of my MacBook pro.
Then I just booted in some recovery mode and just..reset the password!?
Sure macos logged me off from (most) apps and website, but every single file was there unencrypted!
I swear people that keep boasting that whole apple privacy thing have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, nothing short of tech illiterate charlatans. But God the propaganda works.
And don't start me on iMessage.
You chose not to enable FileVault during setup. Probably because you were worried about being locked out and wanted an easy way to reset the password.
Would you prefer that Apple did not give you the option to disable the security feature you disabled during setup?
All while slowly stuffing (more?) ads into their software.
In a lot of ways Apple is as aligned to data privacy the same way other "platforms" are: to gatekeep the user data behind their ad service. It's better than selling your data, maybe, but you're still being tracked and monitored.
The worst part is since Apple is technically not a 3rd party, many of the rules don’t apply to them even though they bring the same harm to the users. Did you notice the new “creative suite” has analytics with identities linked to your Apple account turned on by defend? Free Pages/Numbers is not so free anymore.
> Apple's commitment to privacy
We know now that it was all marketing talk. Apple didn’t like Meta so they spun a bunch of obstacles. Apple has and would use your data for ads, models and anything that keeps the shareholders happy. And we don’t know the half of the story where as a US corp, they’re technically obliged to share data from the not-E2EE iCloud syncs of every iPhone.
It sucks that Apple decided to monitize iPhone the way they have, by controlling the owners ability to install software of their choosing. Ignoring the arguments one could make about this making it "more secure" it's clearly disrespectful to the power user that doesn't want to beg Apple's permission to use their computer. I'll grant them their security claims are sound, but it's hard to take them serious regarding privacy arguments.
Our choices are either (A) an OS monitized by tracking user interaction and activity, or (B) monitized by owning the basic act of installing software on the device, both of these options suck and I struggle to give up the more open option for one that might be more secure.
Ignoring the arguments one could make about this making it "more secure" it's clearly disrespectful to the power user that doesn't want to beg Apple's permission to use their computer. I'll grant them their security claims are sound,
I wouldn't say they are sound. First, macOS provides the freedom to install your own applications (ok, they need to be signed and notarized if the quarantine attribute is set) and it's not the case that the Mac has mass malware infestations. Second, the App Store is full of scams, so App Store - safe, external - unsafe is a false dichotomy.
Apple uses these arguments, but of course the real reason is that they want to continue to keep 30% of every transaction made on an iPhone or iPad. This is why they have responded to the DMA with a lot of malicious compliance that makes it nearly impossible to run an alt-store financially.
(Despite my qualms about not being able to install apps outside the app store, I do think they are doing a lot of good work of making the platform more secure.)
The OP is about security and you specifically ignore security when bringing up a common flamewar topic for which much discussion has already been had on this site. Perhaps such discussion could at least be limited to articles where it is less tenuously related.
I guess I bring it up in the sense that no matter how good their security is, it still sucks that Apple products are so hostile to their owners. It's hard to be impressed by their security work with the platform being what it is.
Security, privacy, and ownership aren't equally separated in my mind.
But all the software is closed source, and there is little to no opportunity to verify all these security claims. You don't have the encryption keys, so effectively the data is not under your control.
If you want to see security done well (or at least better), see the GrapheneOS project.
GrapheneOS also doesn't give you the encryption keys. If you run the official version, there is no way for you to extract the data from your device at all beyond what app developers will let you access. This means that you do not own the data on your device. The backups are even less effective than Apple's, although they say they will work on it.
The developers also appear to believe that the apps have a right to inspect the trustworthiness of the user's device, by offering to support apps that would trust their keys [1], locking out users who maintain their freedom by building their own forks.
It's disheartening that a lot of security-minded people seem to be fixated on the "AOSP security model", without realizing or ignoring the fact that a lot of that security is aimed at protecting the apps from the users, not the other way around. App sandboxing is great, but I should still be able to see the app data, even if via an inconvenient method such as the adb shell.
1. https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
> The developers also appear to believe that the apps have a right to inspect the trustworthiness of the user's device, by offering to support apps that would trust their keys [1], locking out users who maintain their freedom by building their own forks.
That is not a bad thing. The alternative is not having apps that do these checks available on the platform at all. It’s ridiculous that someone should expect that every fork of it should have that capability (because the average developer is not going to accept the keys of someone’s one off fork).
If there’s anyone to blame, it should be the app developers choosing to do that (benefits of attestation aside).
Attestation is also a security feature, which is one of the points of GOS. People are free to use any other distribution of Android if they take issue with it.
Obviously I could be wrong here, this is just the general sentiment that I get from reading GOS documentation and its developer’s comments.
> Attestation is also a security feature
I don't actually disagree with this. The auditor is a perfectly valid use of it. It's good to be able to verify cryptographically your device is running what it's supposed to.
The problem is when it transcends ownership boundaries and becomes a mechanism to exert control over things someone doesn't own, like your bank or government controlling your phone. It is one of the biggest threats to ownership worldwide.
Note also that getting "trusted" comes at the cost of other security features, such as spoofing your location securely to apps:
You can re-sign it using https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot
I don't currently have any root on the phone, but I reserve the right to add it or run the userdebug build at a later date
We could use it to install magisk, but that wouldn't make the build proper "userdebug" one.
I fully agree with your original comment - AOSP security model is NOT a proper solution to the security problem, and I'd add to it that it was also designed to be anticompetitive - Google can do what third party apps can't.
Android architecture is tainted by Google's business model and it shouldn't be used as an example of a secure operating system..
You were not going to be able to use those apps anyways, so what does it matter to you? I, and I suspect many, agree with the purpose of attestation. The problems around it are strictly around establishing good ways to teach apps who they should trust, not around attestation itself. By putting your head in the sand, you'll never improve the situation.
> teach apps who they should trust
Ah, the apps^Wgovernment (look at that page, most of it is government IDs) should be able to discriminate against me for daring to assert control over my own device. And GrapheneOS is saying:
Hey government! We pinky promise to oppress the user just the same, but even more securely and competently than Google/Samsung!
> what does it matter to you
It shows that the developers maybe don't fully have your best interests at heart?
You can request a downloadable a copy of any/all of the data that Apple has associated with your account at https://privacy.apple.com.
This apparently includes retrieving all photos from iCloud in chunks of specified size, which seems an infinitely better option than attempting to download them through the iCloud web interface which caps downloads to 1000 photos at a time at less than impressive download speeds.
Glad there's still at least one tech company that cares about personal security / opsec.
Web version: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/welcome/web
Given that A19 + M5 processors with MIE (EMTE) were only recently introduced, I wonder how extensively MacOS/iOS make use of the hardware features. Is it something that's going to take several years to see the benefit, or does MIE provide thorough protection today?
I was just watching a video on this yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5McB6-2r-ds
Apple’s implementation of MTE is relatively limited in scope compared to GrapheneOS (and even stock Android with advanced security enabled) as it’s hardware intensive and degrades performance. I imagine once things get fast enough we could see synchronous MTE enabled everywhere.
It is curious at the moment though that enabling something like Lockdown Mode doesn’t force MTE everywhere, which imo it should. I think the people who are willing to accept the compromises of enabling that would likely also be willing to tolerate the app crashes, worse performance etc that would come with globally enabled MTE.
It’s technically possible, but it would be difficult and likely require breaching an NDA. A bit pedantic, perhaps, but it’s out there.
Apple makes available on a highly controlled basis iPhones which permit the user to disable “virtually all” of the security features. They’re available only to vetted security researchers who apply for one, often under some kind of sponsorship, and they’re designed to obviously announce what they are. For example they are engraved on the sides with “Confidential and Proprietary. Property of Apple”.
They’re loaned, not sold or given, remain Apple’s property, and are provided on a 12-month (optionally renewable) basis. You have to apply and be selected by Apple to receive one, and you have to agree to some (understandable but) onerous requirements laid out in an legal agreement.
I expect that if you were to interrogate these iPhones they would report that the CPU fuse state isn’t “Production” like the models that are sold.
They refer to these iPhones as Security Research Devices, or SRDs.
The ones I remember most affecting performance were zeroing allocated memory and the Spectre/Meltdown fix. Also, the first launch of a new app is slow in order to check the signature. Whole disk encryption is pretty fast today, but probably is a bit slower than unencrypted. The original FileVault using disk images was even slower.
Somehow, they conveniently forgot to mention these "security" features:
1. Constant popups about "application requesting access" on macOS. That often happens without any user's activity.
2. If you leave the permission popup open for some time (because it's on a different screen), it auto-denies. And then you won't be able to find ANY mention of it in the UI.
3. macOS developers can't be assed to fix mis-features, like inability to bind low ports to localhost without having root access (you can open any listening port on 0.0.0.0 but you can't open 127.0.0.1:80).
No mention of Pegasus and other software of such sort. Can latest iOS still be infected?
There is no point creating such document if elephant in the room is not addressed.
Apple's head of SEAR (Security Engineering & Architecture) just gave the keynote at HEXACON, a conference attended by the companies who make Pegasus such as NSO Group.
That doesn't seem like avoiding the elephant in the room to me. It seems like very much acknowledging the issue and speaking on it head-on.
Why? The obvious conclusion is that Apple is doing everything in its power to make the answer “no.”
You might as well enumerate all the viruses ever made on Windows, point to them, and then ask why Microsoft isn’t proving they’ve shut them all down yet in their documents.
That analogy misses the asymmetry in claims and power.
Microsoft does not sell Windows as a sealed, uncompromisable appliance. It assumes a hostile environment, acknowledges malware exists, and provides users and third parties with inspection, detection, and remediation tools. Compromise is part of the model.
Apple’s model is the opposite. iOS is explicitly marketed as secure because it forbids inspection, sideloading, and user control. The promise is not “we reduce risk”, it’s “this class of risk is structurally eliminated”. That makes omissions meaningful.
So when a document titled Apple Platform Security avoids acknowledging Pegasus-class attacks at all, it isn’t comparable to Microsoft not listing every Windows virus. These are not hypothetical threats. They are documented, deployed, and explicitly designed to bypass the very mechanisms Apple presents as definitive.
If Apple believes this class of attack is no longer viable, that’s worth stating. If it remains viable, that also matters, because users have no independent way to assess compromise. A vague notification that Apple “suspects” something, with no tooling or verification path, is not equivalent to a transparent security model.
The issue is not that Apple failed to enumerate exploits. It’s that the platform’s credibility rests on an absolute security narrative, while quietly excluding the one threat model that contradicts it. In other words Apple's model is good old security by obscurity.
Words words and more words, new levels of verbosity even for a hacker, to say Apple has a weakness and isn't saying they've patched it with certainty; as though nation-state spyware can be conjured on demand from the heavens until governments throw up their hands and say "curses, you've fixed everything, we surrender." Even if there actually were no bugs remaining, I certainly wouldn't sign an affidavit saying no bugs will ever be found in the future.
Apple did create a boolean for that. They call it lockdown mode.
> Lockdown Mode is an optional, extreme protection that’s designed for the very few individuals who, because of who they are or what they do, might be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats. Most people are never targeted by attacks of this nature. When Lockdown Mode is enabled, your device won’t function like it typically does. To reduce the attack surface that potentially could be exploited by highly targeted mercenary spyware, certain apps, websites, and features are strictly limited for security and some experiences might not be available at all.
Then they turn around and upload your iMessages to their own servers in a form that they can read, breaking their own E2EE. Google Messages fixed this issue a long time ago. Why hasn't Apple? https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption
What is "Google Messages"? I can't count the number of articles people have written over time about how many first-party messaging apps Google themselves have put out (and then put down), not to mention what messaging apps get shoveled on by third-party android integrators.
> the main reason a message wouldn't be properly end-to-end encrypted in Google's Messages app is when communicating with an iPhone user, because Apple has dragged their feet on implementing RCS features in iMessage
(or with any other android user who isn't using a first-party device / isn't using this one app)
> [...] Android's equivalent cloud backup service has been properly end-to-end encrypted by default for many years. Meaning that you don't need to convince the whole world to turn on an optional feature before your backups can be fully protected.
You make it out to seem that it's impossible for Google to read your cloud backups, but the article you link to [0] earlier in your post says that "this passcode-protected key material is encrypted to a Titan security chip on our datacenter floor" (emphasis added). So they have your encrypted cloud backup, and the only way to get the key material to decrypt it is to get it from an HSM in their datacenter, every part of which and the access to which they control... sounds like it's not really any better than Apple, from what I'm reading here. Granted, that article is from 2018 and I certainly have not been keeping up on android things.
[0] https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-h...
HSMs are designed to protect encryption keys from everyone including the manufacturer. Signal trusts them for their encryption features. It's the best security possible for E2EE backups with passcode recovery, and Apple does it too for the subset of data that they do real E2EE backups on, like Keychain passwords. Characterizing using an HSM to implement E2EE securely as "not any better than" just giving up on E2EE for messages backups is ridiculous.
You can enable Advanced Data Protection to address that issue with iMessages.
Giving users an option between both paths is usually best. Most users care a lot more that they can’t restore a usable backup of their messages than they do that their messages are unreadable by the company storing them.
I used to work at a company where our products were built around encryption. Users here on HN are not the norm. You can’t trust that most users will save recovery codes, encryption seed phrases, etc in a manner that will be both available and usable when they need them, and then they tend to care a lot less about the privacy properties that provides and a lot more that they no longer have their messages with {deceased spouse, best friend, business partner, etc}.
> Apple can still read any message you exchange with practically anyone through their iCloud backups, since they are overwhelmingly likely to have backups enabled and overwhelmingly unlikely to have proactively enabled the non-default "Advanced Data Protection" feature.
> They could have implemented iMessage to not backup messages from people who enabled ADP, but they didn't. They won't even inform you when your conversation partner has uploaded your messages to Apple's servers in a form that Apple can read.
> Android's equivalent cloud backup service has been properly end-to-end encrypted by default for many years. Meaning that you don't need to convince the whole world to turn on an optional feature before your backups can be fully protected.
> Apple's stated reason for not enabling end-to-end encryption on iCloud backups by default is that it would cause data loss when users lose their devices. But Google's implementation avoids this problem. Furthermore, Apple does do end-to-end encryption by default on other critical information that would be painful to lose, such as your account passwords stored in Keychain. So that excuse doesn't seem to hold water.
This is your blog post, so I'll ask you a question. What are you trying to state in Belief #1? The message is unclear to me with how it's worded:
> In this table, in the "iCloud Backup (including device and Messages backup)" row, under "Standard data protection",
> the "Encryption" column reads "In transit & on server". Yes, this means that Apple can read all of your messages
> out of your iCloud backups.
This shadow device would have it's own keys to read messages sent to your iCloud account. To my knowledge, there's nothing in the security model to prevent this.
This shadow device would have it's own keys to read messages sent to your iCloud account. To my knowledge, there's nothing in the security model to prevent this.
Matthew Green has some great posts about iMessage security. This one describes the key lookup issue:
https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/09/09/lets-tal...
Looking at the linked Apple Platform Security, it seems like the Apple Identity Service is still used as a public key directory.
The table has two categorizations: "In transit & on server" and "End-to-end". The former, which covers iCloud backups in the default configuration, is explicitly NOT end-to-end, meaning there are moments in time during processing where the data is not encrypted.
However, iCloud backups actually are listed as "End-to-end" if you turn on the new Advanced Data Protection feature.
Or Apple can also push an update, which you can't refuse, that upon first message to iCloud just uploads your private key. It's a bit foolish to count on encryption implemented by the adversary you're trying to hide from. Of course, this will most likely only affect individuals targeted by state-level actors.
IIRC Apple has attempted to implement some defences against this, for example by requiring the passcode to be inputted before an update can be installed to prevent another San Bernardino scenario. A cursory search indicates that they also have some kind of transparency log system for updates, but it seems to only apply to their cloud systems and not iOS updates.
They made C memory safe? This is a big thing to gloss over in a single paragraph. Does anyone have extra details on this?
> On devices with iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 or later, Apple modified the C compiler toolchain used to build the iBoot bootloader to improve its security. The modified toolchain implements code designed to prevent memory- and type-safety issues that are typically encountered in C programs. For example, it helps prevent most vulnerabilities in the following classes:
> • Buffer overflows, by ensuring that all pointers carry bounds information that’s verified when accessing memory
> • Heap exploitation, by separating heap data from its metadata and accurately detecting error conditions such as double free errors
> • Type confusion, by ensuring that all pointers carry runtime type information that’s verified during pointer cast operations
> • Type confusion caused by use after free errors, by segregating all dynamic memory allocations by static type